The former Cuyahoga County auditor was the star witness last week in Jimmy Dimora's public-corruption trial. But the onetime attention-craving public official was a dud in the spotlight.

Federal prosecutors, who would be rotten Broadway producers, didn't help the drama when they allowed Russo to avoid cameras each day by entering the Akron court building through a restricted back door.

Prosecutors were probably pleased with Russo's performance, though. He reinforced the most common theme of the 31/2-week trial: Dimora didn't care about helping the public. He just wanted food, prostitutes and cash. In that order.

Russo, who has pleaded guilty to committing numerous crimes while in office, didn't even provide small theater by looking at his former pal, who sat 15 feet away and stared at him.

On the stand, Russo confessed to cheating taxpayers by trading jobs and contracts for cash, cash, cash and cash. In that order.

In the end, I didn't think Russo really added a whole lot to the case against Dimora. Russo just looked liked a much bigger crook.

Defense attorneys' impotent cross-examination failed to turn Russo into a star. They focused too much on the deal Russo struck with prosecutors that will leave him with a reduced sentence. They spent too little time forcing Russo to explain -- for jurors and taxpayers -- how he methodically set about enriching himself at the expense of us all.

To me, the most memorable piece of Russo testimony is this: "We got away with it for so long because we were a small group. We were very intimidating."

First, anybody who ever met Russo would never describe him as intimidating. As I've said before, he acted more like a maitre d' at a family restaurant. And he was more paranoid than vengeful.

Second, Russo and others didn't get way with their schemes because they kept a small circle. They got away with schemes for so long because many politicians and officials close to them gave them a pass.

A 1998 state audit, for instance, found that Russo, then county recorder, used his office like a campaign office, allowing his employees to do political work for him and other Democrats on taxpayers' time.

The prosecutor at the time was Stephanie Tubbs Jones, an ambitious Democrat who went on to become a U.S. representative. The late Tubbs Jones made the call to cut a deal with Russo over the audit's findings, letting Russo plead guilty to a single count of dereliction of duty, a second-degree misdemeanor, and remain in office.

County administrators and other elected officials also chose to ignore Russo's activities, especially his hiring, even after The Plain Dealer published stories about his patronage and campaign practices. They maintain that they had little legal authority over the independent office. That's a cop-out. They could have publicly questioned his practices.

Democratic Party insiders also gave the Dimora-Russo team a pass out of convenience. They may have never known what Russo and Dimora did in Las Vegas or that they were accepting cash from contractors. But they knew of Russo and Dimora's deteriorating reputation, their self-interested political decisions and increasingly lavish lifestyles.

Fortunately, the corruption investigation and the trial have sparked revolution. The new county government, Democratic Party officials and candidates for county prosecutor, among others, are hyper-sensitive to maintaining strict standards of integrity in office.

We can thank Russo and Dimora for that.

On another topic, I want to circle back to my recent column on the Cleveland City Council's decision to spend $5.8 million this year on repairs to Cleveland Browns Stadium that the team says are badly needed.

In it, I noted the Browns have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on programs that benefit children in the city. To be fairer, the organization has spent around $2.9 million in the last 12 years on these programs.

I correctly noted in the column that the Browns pay the city annually $250,000 rent. But the Browns feel this description shortchanges what the organization has paid toward the stadium -- around $30 million for rent, maintenance and short-term repairs, from 1999 through 2011.

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